26th of December

Today is the 360th day of the year, with only 5 days remaining.

1776 - The British are defeated at the Battle of Trenton during the American Revolution.

1799 - Four thousand people attend George Washington's funeral, where Henry Lee declares him as "first in war, first in peace and first in the hears of his countrymen."

1846 - Trapped in snow in the Sierra Nevada mountain range and without food, members of the Donner Party resort to cannibalism.

1861 - Confederate diplomatic envoys James Mason and John Slidell, are freed by the U.S. government, thus heading off a possible war between the United States and Britain.

1862 - Four nuns serving as volunteer nurse on board USS RED ROVER are the first female nurses on a Navy hospital ship.

1862 - The largest mass-hanging in U.S. history took place in Mankato, Minnesota, 38 Native Americans die.

1898 - Marie and Pierre Curie announce the isolation of radium.

1919 - Babe Ruth of the Boston Red Sox, is sold to the New York Yankees by owner Harry Frazee.

1933 - FM radio is patented.

1941 - President Franklin Roosevelt signs a bill establishing the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day in the United States.

1944 - Patton's Third Army breaks the encirclement of surrounded U.S. forces at Bastogne, Belgium.

1972 - 120 American B-52 Stratofortress bombers attacked Hanoi, including 78 launched from Andersen Air Force Base in Guam, the largest single combat launch in Strategic Air Command history.

1982 - Time Magazines Man of the Year, is for the first time a non-human, the personal computer.

1996 - Sadly, six-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey, is found beaten and strangled in the basement of her family's home in Boulder, Colorado.

2004 - An earthquake creates a tsunami causing devastation in Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, the Maldives, and many other areas around the rim of the Indian Ocean, killing over 230,000 people including over 1700 on a moving train.